Adventures in Surreal Estate

From 2D to 3D

2010-10-17T16:01:00.001-07:00

All of a sudden, lumber. Once the foundation is in place, the rough framing happens very quickly. Within a day or two half of the house is framed. This is the part of building that leads to a somewhat false impression that you are closer to being finished than you really are. Framing is fast, but finishing is slow.

But this is where the volume of the house is finally becoming clear. Walls are defined. Hallways become evident. Windows take shape.

Underneath it all there are cryptic messages to remind the builders exactly what they are constructing. Here is a twelve foot ceiling with a nine and a half foot soffit.

Although it isn't as dangerous as finishing the roof several stories in the air, it still takes some balance. And lots of nails. Lots and lots of nails. And nail guns.

And the nail guns take lots and lots of electricity. There are power cables snaking everywhere.

Here is the view from one of the Master Bedroom windows. Even the parts of the house that don't have a direct Strip view, still will have a pretty good view, especially at night when all the lights shine.

Now the house is becoming visible from afar. It's remarkable how you can see it from very far away. But that is a rule. If you have a good view, then people also have a good view of you.

A House in 2D

2010-09-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

When we got back from Australia, the foundation of the house was poured. Now we could walk the house in 2D. This is looking at the front of the house with James' studio and the driveway on the right, the entry door behind the second garage in the center, then the library, powder room and guest suite on the left. Behind the guest suite and library is the Great Room, then the kitchen, my studio, the Master Bedroom hallway. Down the steps is the Master Bedroom suite. Standing at the entrance and looking both ways down the gallery made me realize exactly how big this house is.

This is a closer view of the one car garage in the front of the entry door with the open courtyard behind it. Again there is the library in front of the great room.

This is the main two car garage on the left with James' Studio on the right in front of the theater, the other guest room, and the Master Bedroom suite below.

James and I are pretty good at reading blueprints, so not much surprises us when we see it built, but even so, there is something concrete about seeing the floor plans and walking on them. This small recess in the floor is for the theater screen. Our chairs will be at the edge of the stairs. It's a rather small theater, but then again we have a rather small family and we like to sit close, really close to the screen.

I will say that there were two design elements we didn't quite understand from the blueprints. First was the elevated seating area in front of the Master Bedroom shower. We knew there was a step up from the tub floor area to the seating area in front of the shower door, but we didn't really understand that there was a step down into the shower area itself. We are planning on sloping the shower to the left and put a floor drain across the shower head side, so the step shouldn't be as much as shown here in the concrete, although the concrete step will be covered with redwood/teak decking.

The most surprising element were the two floating triangles coming out of the Master Bathroom. The front one is between the sink areas. The back one is in the shower itself. Both of them are tall three pane windows that will be semi obscured glass. Both of them are shelf areas and not standing areas, so weight on these projections should not be an issue.

These are the only pictures we will have of the foundation itself. Before you could say the word, "construction", the cul de sac was full of lumber and the rough framing started. It should be finished by the end of the week! It seems fast, but there is still lots and lots and lots of detail work to do. After rough framing comes the roof trusses, then the start of the interior mechanical systems: HVAC, electrical, and plumbing. It will be a while before we have any real walls and long time before they start the drywalls. We are just trying to keep up with all the pieces before they need to be ordered. We have still not picked out ALL the plumbing fixtures. We will be working on that Real Soon Now. Tomorrow we have a meeting with the cabinetry builders and Friday with the HVAC people.

Several Weeks Ago

2010-09-11T19:49:00.001-07:00

Several weeks ago we took these pictures, but then life intruded (chemo infusions and travel to Australia) and I haven't had a chance to put these up until now. This is the infamous Jones valve. It allows us to take non-potable water from a fire hydrant rather than using the increasingly expensive and unreliable water truck. (That was pumping water from a lower fire hydrant!) We now have water from the water system, but it seems like it has taken forever (actually it did take over a year). Water is vital for the next phase of construction -- pouring concrete!

That crazy pipe hanging in the sky is actually a pipe for pouring concrete. The contractor standing at the table is checking to make sure the concrete goes in the right places. Although the table is handy, it has ended up over the edge of the precipice more times than once. The winds can be fierce on the top of that ridge. I wonder if we will get waves in the pool from the strong winds. But the breezes should cool the house down nicely in the spring and fall when we have the windows open.

This picture gives a better view of the concrete pouring truck. That arm is long enough to put concrete almost anywhere on the property. I am glad that we have professionals doing that as I certainly wouldn't like to be pushing wheelbarrows of concrete into retaining walls. In fact, though we are handy enough to replace a faucet or troubleshoot a washing machine, I'd rather not take on any of the large construction jobs. In one spot in the great room we have a forty feet steel beam that needs to be placed. I want lots of machinery and skilled contractors to take on that job.

Here are the last of the retaining walls. Theoretically speaking this is not a retaining wall, but rather the footing of the master bathroom foundation. It just happens that we need to lift the final floor about six feet up before we get to the true floor level. Still, even standing down here we are finally getting a true feel for the size and scope of the finished construction. Yes, our master bath is bigger than the master bedroom. When you only need a bedroom to sleep, then this makes perfect sense.

The space at the end is for the two toilets and the large space to the right is actually two closets. The bedroom starts right at the turn on the left hand side.

Now there is a lot more finished than you see here. While we were in Australia, they started pouring the final foundation. The plumbers and electricians were busily digging trenches for any of their conduits that needed to be under the foundation before they did the final pour. At each step we re-evaluate everything that has been done or is about to be done. Although changes can be made at any step, we'd rather not waste money by tearing up anything that has been built. This means staying in constant communications with the contractors to remind them of any little changes that have been made (but maybe not communicated to the workers on site). It also mean thinking ahead to the next phases. Making changes before they build is always the best policy. So far everything is according to specs and we are absurdly happy about how this is going. We can't wait to move in!

How Firm A Foundation

2010-08-08T17:30:00.001-07:00

Tired of walls and more walls? Well, when you have to shore up fifty feet of dirt and gravel, it takes a lot of walls. Yes, first they removed the dirt, then they built the wall, then they replaced the dirt. But this isn't any dirt. This is specially sifted and compacted dirt. After each compaction a soils inspector comes out and checks that the compaction is tamped down enough to withstand a 10.0 earthquake (even though this is not earthquake country). So the walls go up slowly. Dig, build, fill, check. Rinse and repeat.

And this is what an almost finished wall looks like. The bottom level is the rockery wall; carefully placed boulders that are wired in place and covering a concrete block wall. The next level of concrete block wall is a bit of a mismash of colors, but the entire wall will be covered with dark black and red stone tiles. Notice the 30% slope between the two walls. I'm not sure how the landscapers are going to deal with that slope, but there won't be any ground cover on it, just trees. Though after this compaction, how they will dig holes and watering lines to the trees, I have no idea.

This picture shows the final color of the rockery wall. When the local rocks are dug up out of the ground, they are white. Over time they will weather to a dark brown, but in the meantime the color is helped along by a coat of spray paint. Even the local canyon walls are spray painted. By the time the paint wears off, the color should be natural. You can just see the rebar for third and final level of retaining walls in the middle of the picture.

And finally all the retaining walls are completed and the foundation is started. If you look way, way down to the left hand side of the picture you will see the top of the rockery wall. Fifty feet of descent looks a lot steeper when you are standing at the top of it. These jagged walls are the last retaining walls before the foundation. The jutting out triangle in the front of the picture will be the location for our spa in the master bedroom courtyard. The entire master bedroom will be three and a half feet lower than the rest of the house. Since the descent is steeper on the east (master bedroom side), the only way we could make an almost one story house work is to slightly drop the master bedroom section. There is still a deep foundation on that side that acts as the final retaining wall.

But it was not all walls, walls, walls in June and July. We enjoyed a long road trip from Lexington, Kentucky, to Las Vegas. We also attended Westercon, a roving science fiction convention held in Pasadena, California, this year. Since most of our friends live elsewhere in the world, it is always good to get together and see them at conventions.

Walls, and More Walls

2010-06-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

Some day the house will look something like this. The main shape of the building is pretty much correct, but the vegetation details are way wrong. First, there is no grass. Lawn in the desert is an incredible water hog. Unless you have small children or dogs, grass is not a necessity. Secondly, the house faces south. If the artist drew the house as it actually will be landscaped, you couldn't see it at all. We are planting as much shade on this side as we can. And that graceful branch in the top right corner? No. The house faces a firetruck turnaround circle and a cliff next to open space. The only vegetation on the ridge will be what we plant.

But before we can get to the foundation of the house, first they had to finish the retaining walls. The guys here were hard at work stacking cement bricks through rebar and building up the walls. They also had to wait for a couple of days for the acres of concrete to dry before they could apply the final finish to the interior of the wall. First they put tar paper against the wall and brushed it with more tar to provide a water tight seal. There are some weep holes at the very bottom of the wall to let any rain (all four inches of it per year) drain away in a timely manner. At least we don't have to worry about snow!

While we are waiting for the second wall to be backfilled and the last wall to be started, we continued to make interior decisions. We visited Arizona Stone and looked at some Black Mountain irregular rock facing for the fireplace. It will cover the entire wall up to the ceiling and the back of the wall (with two closets). We looked at a lot of material at Arizona Tile. Although luxury houses in the area are often floored with natural stone, I think it is a pain to keep clean and doesn't wear well if you have wheeled chairs and tables. James and I both found some porcelain tile that we liked for each of our studios and I think I have come to terms with the kitchen granite. Most of the kitchens I have designed have had some wildly patterned granite. They have been truly amazing slabs of stone with lots of quartz inclusions. This time, I think I am aiming for something blander and more uniform. With the incredible view and the artistic kitchen table, I think the counters should be more of a background.

We also worked on picking out plumbing fixtures and finally talked to the door guy. We are going for plain slab maple doors with dados (incised cuts into the door surface). We have seen a lot of doors in contemporary houses that are dark and have narrow strips of silver metal horizontially across the door. Since we will have light doors, we might have the dados painted black or look for a black metal strip. The strangest thing we picked out were the door handles. For the first house we built, we spend months looking for the exactly right handle that wasn't round and wasn't a lever. The elliptical knobs we chose were unique, but no one noticed them except contractors. This time we agreed on a lever handle in about 30 seconds. It's fairly plain, but functional. It is the exact same door handle that we have in the house we live in now and neither of us noticed it when we picked it out.

The Pour

2010-05-31T19:12:00.001-07:00

I am not a morning person. When our contractors called and said they would be pouring concrete for the second retaining wall at 7:30 am on Friday, I would rather have sent James out there with his better camera and just stayed bundled up in bed. But James was in the San Francisco Bay Area to see his doctor and go to Baycon. I stayed here for my Friday radiation treatment. So I piled on the layers (yes, it is the end of May in Las Vegas, but we haven't had a 100 degree day yet) and hustled over to the site. The wind was howling at 40 miles an hour and it wasn't more than 65 degrees F. Later in the day it got appreciatively warmer, but not that morning. I got there before the first cement truck, but shortly there was a platoon of cement trucks lining up to the boom crane.

In the trench with the rebar several guys were maneuvering the pipe and trying to spread the cement in an even layer. They had removed their shoes and were wearing rubber boots.

Two other guys were building the concrete block wall.

This is a one minute video of the process. I turned the audio down so that people wouldn't get blown away. In the bottom left hand corner you can see two guys building the retaining wall itself. Everything was moving very quickly. They thought that the entire pour would be finished by noon.

This is the mostly finished wall on the eastern (lower) side. Eventually the cement block will be covered with decorative tile.

This is the finished pour. The cement goes from the low point on the western edge and stairsteps up to the highest edge on the east. The east wall is about 20 feet tall. Eventually the trench will be backfilled with dirt and compacted. There is nothing planned for these levels except some trees that will be planted there. We tried to make sure that there was access for gardeners, but it isn't really a usable area.

Rebar, Rebar

2010-05-22T19:41:00.001-07:00

The soil was finally compacted enough (102%, is that even possible?) to start laying down about forty miles of rebar for the second retaining wall. Originally they were supposed to pour concrete on Friday, but it was hot and windy, so they decided to add another twenty miles of rebar and pour next Wednesday when it should be cooler and less windy. Once the concrete is dry, they will backfill that wall, compact the soil, and have it tested for proper compaction. Then they can start on the last wall which is a lot shorter than the first two walls, but has to hold up the pool. They have about a third of the house pad dug down four feet from the original level and should be pouring the foundation in about 45 days.

We also met with the architect for the first time since we got the permits. Our major questions at this time are the placement of the downspouts and the placement of the pulldown staircase to the attic mechanical room. Although many houses in Clark County don't have any gutters at all (we only get four inches of rain per year on average), we will have ones that spill through pipes in the exterior walls. Some of the channels in the drawings seem to be placed through window areas. Oops! A more serious problem is the pulldown staircase to the attic mechanical area. Most of the prebuilt ones are only nine feet tall. Right now the staircase is scheduled to be placed in my studio closet which would have a lowered ceiling to accommodate it. Even though we would only use the staircase rarely, we still need to leave access for it. Which really limits the amount of storage space that my closet would have. It would be better if we could put the staircase in the ceiling of the hallway to the kitchen. Our contractors will research longer ladders.

Both our architect and contractors seem to be surprised that we have so few changes to the architectural drawings. I feel as if we have been living in the house already. We really have tried to think of every little detail. But I have to admit that I am getting excited about getting to the framing stage. Once there are three dimensional walls it is so much easier to see how everything fits together.

Not Much To Show

2010-05-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

There really isn't much to show for progress the past week. They have carved out the place for the second wall, but they haven't started building it yet. I'm glad that we didn't have to build the driveway from the lower road. We looked at a lot of steep, cliff faced lots and the driveways take up a lot of room and can be quite steep. Admittedly we don't have ice and snow, but still a long driveway is a hassle unless you have acres and acres.

We didn't see any more showrooms as James had to go to Maui to answer another set of ridiculous requests on the pedestal for four Maui electric meters that is on the edge of our property there. The county thinks everyone in our subdivision should lower these to four feet tall, though that will make the meter reading more difficult and could even damage the meters during flash floods. We have been fighting the county over this for longer than a year. So as frustrating as dealing with the City of Henderson has been it is nothing compared to trying to build anything in Hawaii. I will leave you with a short video of the only activity on the site this week -- screening rocks.

FIrst Wall Finished

2010-05-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

The first wall is finished, including the backfill. Now come the civil engineers again to measure the compaction and check the footing for the second wall. The second wall will be built with the same interlocking blocks, but this time it will be faced with large tiles, not rocks.

While the construction people are building walls, we are picking out plumbing fixtures. The toilets were relatively easy (functional, power flushing, one piece, all white except for the guest room where the theme is black). So were the kitchen sinks (Kohler cast iron Executive Chef and oval Iron/Tones). The bar sink will be something small in stainless steel. Unfortunately during our visit I had a bad reaction to my first chemotherapy pills and we had to cut short our visit. We will try to get back there next week.

Those Are BIG Rocks!

2010-04-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

The structural part of the bottom wall is finished. It is even backfilled. The stakes are in place for the second wall. Now they are placing the large rock cladding in front of the bottom wall. Eventually these rocks will be spray painted a darker color to match the rocks on the cliffs in the area. The crane operator was very skilled. He was picking up those rocks as if they were small building blocks and putting them in the right place one after the other.

The general contractor says that everything is going very smoothly. They should be able to start pouring the foundation in a little more than a month. But that means that we have to make final decisions on the interior doors and plumbing before the foundation is laid.

We have checked out the recommended window and exterior door manufacturer. They build mostly commercial windows and doors, but since the exterior theme is "Silicon Valley Corporate", what they have is perfect for us; heavy aluminum framed windows and doors in clear coat. They will be very modern and clean. Unfortunately we don't have a clue about what to chose for interior doors; painted? stained? paneled? We will have a lot of decisions to make next week.

First They Built A Wall

2010-04-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

At the end of the second week, we have not only a wall foundation, but an actual wall! And strangely enough for southern Nevada in April, it rained much of the afternoon. This was a good thing because the dust can be a real problem, especially when we get strong winds, like yesterday. The white truck is a water truck that is used to keep the dust down when the contractors are moving dirt. We should be able to use the water from the local water pipes, but unfortunately, the pipes along our road are not hooked up yet -- Real Soon Now. The wall will be extended further down the slope (to the left in the picture above) as soon as the inspector passes on the sewer pipe that will be under the wall at the lowest point. We were lucky to be able to connect to a lower sewer pipe rather than the pipe in front of the house and have to use a pump to raise the sewage up to the front road.

The wall they are building is made of interlocking bricks with netting between every four rows to further strengthen the wall. Although the bricks are fairly handsome by themselves, eventually they will be clad in rough rock to match the blasted canyon walls further down the slope. They are just about ready to start the next wall up the slope, which will be clad in stone tiles to match the tiles on the house itself. There are three levels of walls and a fairly huge footing for the house itself. It wouldn't have taken months to get the permits if we could have built one tall wall, but there are restrictions on the height that any wall can be. Then every wall has to be separated by several feet before another wall can be built. It took a lot of negotiation to get the engineering of these walls just right. But I am actually feeling less paranoid about the length of time it took to get our building permits. Another couple who bought a piece of flat land about the same time we did and are building a smaller and more traditional house near us just got their building permit. I guess firing 90% of the plan checkers who used to work for the City of Henderson has brought most construction to a standstill.

Tomorrow we are planning to meet with the first of several window vendors. We need to get the windows ordered because most of them are custom sizes. After choosing the windows we will work on ordering the doors, so that when the framing starts in a couple of months everything structural will be ready to go.

Week One

2010-04-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

Sure, it is good to see people digging on the site. But it is even better to see them finally building. What they are doing here is forming the foundation for the first retaining wall at the bottom of the slope. Slowly they will work their way up the slope, filling in behind finished retaining walls and building more retaining walls higher on the slope.

This is wall that they will eventually build, then face with rock. These are interlocking concrete segments that will be linked together for strength. By next week I hope to be able to show you at least a partial wall.

Day One

2010-04-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

I guess we were way optimistic that we would have a building permit in only two more weeks. Try four more months! And after the building permit was finally approved, we still had to wait while the excavator tested the soil (again) and lined up the heavy machinery. But even if we are eight months behind where I thought we would be by now, we finally are starting the construction phase.

This is what the site looks like now - a big orange digger and a smaller yellow hauler. With, of course, the most important part of the site, the orange portapotty. For the next 90 days, there won't be a lot of work on the house itself. Starting at the base of the fifty foot slope, they will be working their way up the slope building retaining walls. The first wall will be a large rockery wall that will match the rock near the site. That will be followed by several walls that will be tiled to match the house itself.

I won't have daily reports for a while, but at least I hope to see progress week by week. Time to go back and make a few more decisions, starting with the windows and interior doors. Of course, what I am really thinking about are the kitchen cabinets and the paint colors, but those decisions are needed far in the future.

Final Plan

2009-10-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is the final plan. We lost the separate entrance for the guest room, but got the curved great room with unobstructed Strip view that we wanted. We lost a lot of the bar, but gained a much bigger kitchen. We lost the theater door at the end of a long hallway (we were going to make it steel and leather), but gained the projector throw that we needed for our big screen. We lost the elevator (and still have some stairs), but kept most of the house on one level. We lost some of our closet space, but kept the private Master Bedroom area.

Please ignore some of the raggedy lines at the bottom of the drawing. I had to make this up by scanning the full sized plans and piecing it together in Photoshop. Not all of the pieces are exactly the same scale and orientation. But overall, though it has been months that we have had to live with this final design, it meets all of our criteria. We are quite happy with it. No, take that back. We are ECSTATIC about this design. We are already living there in our heads. We are putting furniture in place. Deciding where pictures will go. Contemplating where each kind of book will go (notice, there are a lot of built in bookcases, even without showing the freestanding ones.) We are even ready to hang our clothes (or in James' case, his art) in our closets. If you have a clear idea of how you live and you can communicate this to your architect and he listens to you, all designs will be this good.

Working With An Architect

2009-10-02T18:50:00.000-07:00

There haven't been any posts over the summer as we have waited endlessly for a building permit. Sometimes these dull periods appear. You want to do something, but there is not much that you can do effectively. We did meet with several cabinet makers and some flooring professionals, but after a while we simply went into hibernation, waiting for this project to get started again. We are still probably two weeks away from breaking ground, but I want to go back to February when we started to work with our architect.

No matter how detailed your instructions are, there will be some disconnects between what you said and what your architect heard. You might have even changed you mind about the things that are really important. This is the first drawing that Bob Sherman gave to us. Looking at it again, it is remarkably close to what we ended up with, but there are significant areas of change.

The first thing we changed completely was the idea of a two story house. Since this house is on a steep hillside we were pretty sure we would need two stories to get all the rooms we wanted. Since we want this house to be the last house we ever live in, an elevator seemed to be necessary with more than one floor so that we could move from floor to floor even with a walker or a wheelchair. But when we looked at the first design, the two bedrooms on the bottom floor seemed to be more space than we would need. If we eliminated the staircase and the elevator we could use that space to add the one bedroom/cat room/gym that we needed.

The other major change that we wanted was to emphasis the view of the Strip, especially at night. Bob gave us a tremendous covered porch, but we both felt that the columns would get in the way of the view. We were looking for more of a circular wall focused on the view. The bar was too big and so was the formal dining area that we mostly use in our current house as a large desk rather than an eating area. Even when we have guests, we usually use the kitchen area to eat.

But the overall design was terrific. It splits the "public areas" from the "private areas". It gave us two studios, a library and a home theater. It also gave us a private entrance with a huge gallery/hall for art work. Yes, the design needs to be revised, but not as much as we thought it might have to be. Next? What the final design looks like and the compromises we made to get there.

Choosing a Contractor

2009-06-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

We started talking to contractors before we talked to our first architect. There may not be a lot of architects to choose from, the there are always a lot of contractors. Since this will be large house with a lot of custom features, we wanted a contractor who had built houses similar to ours.

If you are doing a simple remodeling project it is possible to hire a specialized contractor for painting or roofing or building decks. But when you are building an entire house, you want a general contractor. They will not have all their workers on staff, but it is our experience that the best contractors know the best subcontactors. Several contractors we talked to were pleasant individuals, but they were used to building smaller houses and only building one house at a time. Other contractors were working on several houses at once. For us it was important to not just talk to the general contractor but also to their site supervisors. The general contractor owns the company, but the site supervisor will be managing your project every day. It was also important to us to see houses being built and not just houses that were finished. We wanted to see the rough framing; was it straight, were things level, did joins meet up. We wanted to see the job site; was it tidy, were places not being worked on swept, were piles of materials in order. We wanted to talk to the contractors about their building philosophy; this is a desert, were they careful about insulation and window and door weatherproofing, did they have detailed scheduling and budgeting tools, did they have a website where we could check on progress when we were not in Nevada, had they ever worked with our architect before, did they have a good working relationship with the developer in whose community we were building.

One contractor was recommended to us by our realtor. They built custom homes, but were a very small division of a much large company who built tract housing. They had the advantage of all the budgeting and bidding methods of a much larger contractor, but weren't actually building any homes at the moment, so it was difficult to visit a working job site. They eventually showed us a smaller house that they were building for the company's owner. We found another contractor by visiting a hillside lot during rough framing in the same community as we were building. We liked the attention to detail and the tidy nature of the building site. These contractors were building several very large houses in all stages of construction. We visited their job sites over several months, but none of the job sites were as tidy and controlled as the first house we saw. Sometimes it is the owner and not the general contractor who keeps things in order.

We really liked both of these contractors, but our architect was not sure that they were the right companies for the job, so he recommended two more contractors. One contractor worked mostly in the exclusive areas of Summerlin on the west side. He was building the personal home of a commercial casino architect. It was extremely modern and complex. He was also building a more traditional house with a most untraditional elevated swimming pool with viewing ports in the bottom of the pool. Not only did we like this contractor, but we also liked his site supervisor. However he had never built a house in the community that we were in. The last contractor was building two houses in our community, but both of them were houses built on speculation and both owners had stopped construction when their funds had dried up. The houses were lovely, but we were worried that the contractor might not have enough work to stay in business.

My husband and I went back and forth agonizing about who to choose. We liked all the final four contractors, but each of them had something we were wary about. Our architect wanted to finish the drawings and submit them to the Architectural Design Review Committee, but not before he could talk to our general contractor about the plans. If the contractor wanted to make any slight contruction changes in the framing, the architect had to know about it before our first set of plans was distributed. We had to choose someone soon. We had one last meeting with the contractor from the west side. We wanted to make sure that he wouldn't mind a project that was far from his normal building sites. He assured us that he had built houses much further away and that we would be assigned the site supervisor that we had liked so much. Telling the other three contractors that we had chosen someone else was painful, since we had spent so much time with them all. One of them did not react at all well and blamed our architect for our choice. I guess I am glad that we did not pick him. As we visit building supply services for granite, bathroom fixtures and cabinets, I am glad to hear that all these suppliers think very highly of our contractor. He's been building in Clark County for many years and has a great reputation.

Choosing an Architect

2009-05-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

Once you have a set of functional requirements you can move to the next important part of building a house -- choosing an architect. If you are having a hard time visualizing how all of your requirements will come together, it may be useful to study a few plan books. There are a lot of predesigned houses available. Studying these plan books may highlight some things you hadn't thought about in your layout. Do you need an entry area? Does it matter how close the garage is to the kitchen? Does it matter how close together the bedrooms are? Once you start becoming familiar with the language of architectural drawings, how they draw doors, windows, or lighting, you are ready to talk to architects.

You can find architects via friends, realtors, contractors or even Google. First look at their web pages. Have they done structures that you like? Have they done houses in the price range you are looking for? Well known architects are used to design for demanding clients with wishes for large houses and expensive details. But that does not mean that all architects are expensive or only design large houses. There are many small firms that may be able to provide you the unique design you want at a price you can afford. In looking at architects in Clark County, Nevada, we rejected some of the more famous ones. They tend to design the same house over and over. Their houses were grand, but not the functional private spaces that we were looking for.

The first architect we talked to had a small office where she designed both residental structures and commercial structures. We liked her. I can't stress enough that you should like your architect. Unless there is a mutual respect you will not have a successful project. But after talking to her and looking at her portfolio we realized that she was missing an essential ingredient that we were looking for -- vision. We have worked with some passionate architects. It's not always easy, but you will get a better project if you both bring some new ideas into the design. Her designs were boxy and traditional. She could do our project, but it would have the rote details of a tract house.

We were quite excited by the next architect. He had designed several houses that we really liked with a modern sensibility and exquisite details. But he was blinded by the hot economy we have had in Clark County for several years. He was not used to selling his services, but instead was used to having more work than he could easily accomplish. He had a dismissive attitude and was not prepared to show us his projects in detail or even listen to our list of requirements. My husband took an immediate dislike to him. We interviewed several young architects. Some of them had worked at larger firms, but none of them had actually designed and finished an entire house. They had passion and vision, but we were not willing to trust our project to someone not familiar with the process from start to finish.

A lot of the homes in Clark County are Tuscan or Mediterranean. We were running out of local architects that actually designed modern houses. We decided to ask an architect we had worked with before from San Francisco if he was interested in a project in Nevada. He had designed an award winning loft for us in San Francisco. If he had worked on other long distance projects and was interested in our concept, he would be a good choice to work with again. When we initially interviewed him about our project we learned that he had done designs in Hawaii and Seattle, though never in a desert environment. We decided to fly him to Las Vegas and let him meet some contractors that we were considering. Unfortunately it became clear as he talked to the contractors that his way of building was not suitable to extreme climate in Clark County. He was not familiar with the construction codes or the materials used in a desert climate. Although we were disappointed that we could not use him, we had one more architect to interview that had been recommended by a builder.

We met this architect in his home office. He has been working in the field for decades. He had designed both commercial and residential structures, both here and overseas. His office was filled with colored sketches of his projects and he brought out some of his most modern designs to show us. He immediately understood the ideas behind our requirements. He was excited by the project and couldn't wait to see the actual land. Although he was not as inexpensive as the annoying architect or as expensive as our San Francisco architect, we knew we would get a first class project for him. We promptly hired Bob Sherman and we couldn't be more happy with him.

Our Wish List

2009-04-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

After outlining the functional areas that you should consider before asking an architect to design a house for you (or even looking to buy an already built house), you might want to see what we used as our design criteria.

Philosophy: We are looking for a contemporary house that is private and functional. The house is not modern (boxy, white, minimalist), but is non-rectilineal, neutral with strong accents, textured.  It is Desert Contemporary. The landscaping and exterior of the house harmonizes with the desert environment. It is a stage to show art. It is a place to produce art;  photography, fabric, and culinary. It is a library and a theater. It is meant for intellectual adults. Not specifically Green, but sensitive to the environment:  Insulated, sheltered from the Sun and Wind.

Functional Spaces: Dramatic Entrance (in the interior), Entertaining Space (Views, seating for large groups, fireplace, bar, powder room) , Dining Area/Room?, Large kitchen with eating area and pantry. (Modern,  functional, meticulously designed, 700 cookbooks, near Garage). Master Bedroom (For sleeping, quiet and dark), Master Bathroom (Large and functional) , Two Master Bedroom Closets (Separate and large), Outdoor Hot Tub and Shower (Very, very Private), Digital Photo Studio (Desk, Computers, large printers, immense amounts of storage. Dark, known as The Cave). Sewing Studio (Sewing stations, Cutting table, immense amounts of storage, Design Wall. Well lit.) Media Room (Home Theater with huge screen, great   sound. Looks and sounds great in the dark.) Guest Room with Full Bath. Library (Tons of books. Office?) Laundry Room with sink. Gym area. Roof Terrace. Pool?

Necessary  Ingredients: Windows that open for cross ventilation, Hardwood Floors, Art niches for sculpture, Walls for Art, Zoned air conditoning, Luggage Storage, Wine Storage, Steam Room, Bali Door, Elevator/Dumbwaiter?

Outdoors: Outdoor Grill and Eating Area, Low maintenance, Trees for shade, Water feature at entrance, Palms, Citrus, Roses, Herbs, Sculpture Wall

As with all design statements, how these ideas get implemented and what ideas are abandoned will be addressed differently by each architect. But if an architect tends to build His House and not Your House or if an architect does not resonate with your design philosophy, then it is time to move on and look for someone else.

So You Want to Build a House

2009-02-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

If you really want to build a house that fits your life, you first have to decide how you actually live your life in your current home. Forget square footage, forget bedrooms and bathrooms, forget living rooms and family rooms. What you need to know are functional spaces. You need to track your life from the moment you get up to the time you go to bed and do that for every member of your family. You need to account for weekends, guests, parties, and hobbies.

Starting from your morning, where is your bathroom? Do you share your bathroom with others? Do you need a tub? A shower? Just a sink? How many people in your house use bathrooms in the morning at the same time? Where do you store your clothes? How do you put on your shoes? Do you need a chair near where you get dressed? Do you watch television in the morning? Listen to the radio? Do you need coffee before you even get dressed? Do you need to take care of young children first thing in the morning? Are their bedrooms close by? Do you have teenagers? Do you need to roust them from bed? Do you eat breakfast? Do you eat standing at the counter? At the breakfast table? In the dining room? Do you make breakfast for others? Do you pack lunch for others? Do others work in the kitchen at the same time you do? Do you leave the house to work? Where do you leave your keys, your wallet, your purse, your briefcase, your coat? Where does your family leave the things they need to take out for the day? Where do you park your car? How many cars do you own? Or do you use public transportation? Does one or more persons in your family stay at home during the day? Do you have very young children? Where do they eat? Where do they play? Where do they nap?

How do you manage your household? How often you eat at home? How often do you cook at home? How many people use the kitchen at the same time? How many dishes do you have? How many pots and pans? How many small appliances? Do you keep any appliances on the kitchen counters? How often do you shop for groceries? Where do you store them? How big a refrigerator do you need? Do you have a separate freezer? How far do you have to walk from the garage to the kitchen? Where do you put your garbage? Where do you do your laundry? Where do you store your laundry supplies? Where do you store your cleaning supplies? Do you have more than one vacuum? Where do you put your mail? Bills? Magazines? Newspapers? Packages? Do you use a shared family calendar? Do you have pets? Where do you keep their supplies? Their food?

What do people in your family do when they come home? Do you need a space for children to do homework? Where do you watch television? How many people watch television at the same time? How many televisions do you have? Do you have a shared family computer? Do you have a work at home computer? Do you need a separate desk for working at home? Do you need a reading chair? How many people eat dinner at the same time? Would you rather eat in a separate dining room or near the kitchen? When do people in your family go to bed? Do you need to have quiet areas for sleeping while other people are still awake? Do you take a shower or a bath before bed? Where do you put the clothes you wore today? Do you need a space to lay out your clothes for the next day before going to bed? Do you read in bed? Watch television in bed?

What do you do on the weekends? Do you have hobbies that need storage space? A workshop? A crafts room? A library for your books? An office for your computers? Do you need to store bicycles or kayaks? Exercise equipment? Christmas decorations? Where do you store your suitcases? Where do you store your seasonal clothes? Do friends and family come to your house? Where do you gather? Do you need a large dining room? Do you need a room for overnight guests? Do you need a separate area for children and their friends? Do you use your backyard? Do you cook outside? How far is it from the kitchen? Do you need an outside play area?

This may seem like a daunting list of questions, but if you are going to spend the money and energy to build a house, then you should have all the spaces in that house that will allow your family to be comfortable and efficient. Once you decide how you live, it's a lovely fantasy to give everyone their own bedroom, their own bathroom, their own workroom, their own entertainment area. But even if you could afford a 10,000 square foot house, do you want to clean it and take care of it? That's why you need to think about multifunctional spaces and not Rooms. Maybe it's time to do away with that living room that you only use to set up the Christmas tree once a year. Maybe it's time to do away with the formal dining room, when you always eat in the kitchen. Maybe it's time to do away with the double oven and large kitchen sink, when you never cook. Maybe you need a larger refrigerator for left over take out instead. Maybe a desk or small area near the garage door or the front door to store cellphones, purses, and briefcases would be more efficient than another bedroom that you only use for junk storage. Maybe a separate playroom would be better than a scattering of toys in the unused living room. Maybe a dedicated study would be better than scattering papers on the kitchen table. Maybe you don't need a dedicated craft room, if you have a craft cabinet in the kitchen or family room. Only you can tell what spaces are necessary for your lifestyle.

Once you know what spaces you need, now you have a plan that you can bring to an architect. And you have a plan that you can use to evaluate the design that the architect draws up.

The Decision

2008-12-14T19:11:00.001-08:00

Lot #28, Day
Originally uploaded by tropo

We have seen dozens of pieces of property. Some have been much larger, some of have been smaller. Many have been cheaper. I think my husband was most in love with the two acres also in MacDonald Highlands, just because it was such a huge piece of property. It was tucked in the back of some hills and had privacy in all directions, including the fact that it was one of only nine house to be built on that road. But once we saw the night view from Lot #28, even he was sold that this was the perfect piece of property to build on. The night view is simply spectacular, all of the Strip and most of the valley from Anthem to Lake Las Vegas.

Does this mean that this is the perfect piece of land? Rarely is a piece of land perfect. It might have a great view, but be really steep. It may be flat, but small. This lot has a road that curves around three sides of the property. I am worried that the house will not be as private as I would like it to be, even though the road will have very little traffic on it. The original piece of land was a steep, steep slope, but the road construction company filled in a pad across almost the entire piece of property. We will still have to do a lot of engineering to make the fill stable enough for a house. And the house cannot be more than one story above the pad height. That means that whatever we design will probably be two stories and spill down the hillside. Although we are really grateful to have a one story house now after the "house of stairs" that we owned in Burlingame, I think we can handle two stories, especially if we add an elevator or at least a dumbwaiter.

Now comes the really exciting part: actually designing the house. We are going to interview two construction companies on Monday and Tuesday. Later on there will be interviews with architects, kitchen designers, landscapers, and media consultants. We have talked about the functional areas we would like to see on this piece of land. Now to see if we can make all the parts fit.

Do You Golf?

2008-11-23T11:18:00.000-08:00

I know some of you, especially from the East Coast, will probably find the rocky landscape pictures from yesterday somewhat depressing. These lots may be more to your style. This is a different development surrounding a golf course and filled with houses that are more Tuscan influenced. Most of the lots face the golf course and some have a strip view.

This is a typical half acre lot with a view of the strip to the north. About three quarters of it is buildable, with a portion of steep slope down to the golf course below. The buildable land is perfectly flat fill and priced very reasonably. There is no earth moving or engineering to worry about. I'm sure many people would find this heavenly. But to us it just seems boring. We are not golfers. Privacy and space are more important to us than greenery. The option of building a very different, very unique house is more appealing to us than another McMansion. I tried very hard to like this community, but in the end we are going back to the first rocky community (which does have a golf course, but not next to any of the properties that we are interested in). Tomorrow morning we will walk some of the properties again that we saw in the late afternoon. We will also go back after dark to see what views the properties have of the sparkling strip and city lights.

Introduction

2008-11-22T16:21:00.001-08:00

Five years ago we moved to Clark County, Nevada, from the San Francisco Bay Area. Our plan was to buy a temporary house and to start building our Dream House. But as life often does, it got in the way and only now are we ready to build The House. At least in the last thirty years we have bought, designed, remodeled, and sold many houses and condominiums. We are experienced and know what to expect, but we also know that the unexpected is just around the corner. Although we have some ideas about the type of house we want (private, contemporary), we know that the land will dictate the design. So starting last Thursday we started looking for land. Land in Clark County comes in two types; slopes and flat. All of them are going to be pretty rocky. The first lot we looked at has a 60 - 70 degree slope. It also has a phenomenal view of the Las Vegas Strip. At night the lights would be mesmerizing. But the building restrictions on such a slope and ridgeline are also pretty daunting. We looked at a lot of sloping land, even one that starts with a twenty foot rock wall that my husband likened to the Mines of Moria.

Other land is flat. No not originally flat, but filled flat. This is a two acre parcel surrounded by hills. It is surrounded by a curved road and would make a spectacularly beautiful private compound. But it does not have a strip view, which is why it is priced much less than the surrounding properties. When we first moved here we thought that the next house would have a spectacular strip view, but the house we are in now has no view at all. Instead it is focused on the backyard which has a spectacular pool. Do we really need a view? Can we build on a slope and go back to the House of Stairs we once lived in in California? It certainly is nice to have everything on one level. While we debated these questions, we looked at another community which features a golf course and not just rocks.